Flare "The Flamingo" Drefan
“''A group of Flamingos is called a flamboyance''” "Drefan means trouble and trouble means it's time to fuck shit up" History Flare Drefan grew up with their identical twins Val and Owen in a lower middle class household with their parents, Robert and Elizabeth Drefan. Their childhood were relatively normal, other than their family’s intense religiosity. They lived in Upstate New York, and attended normal public school. Church camp and youth group were a big part of their childhood. Growing up in an almost cultishly religious household, they were unequipped to face the tribulations of elementary and middle school, and had few friends outside of their two siblings. At age 13, Flare and their triplets were in a minor car crash. The car hit a patch of ice and fishtailed into a tree. They weren’t going very fast and everyone was relatively uninjured, but it was still a terrifying experience and their powers began to subtly manifest shortly afterwards. The decision to hide their powers was made very shortly after the accident, as soon as they figured out what was happening. Their parents were very open about their belief that super-powered individuals were consorts of satan and had no place on God’s good earth. They never expected that their parents would actually physically harm them, but they agreed that it was in their best interest to fly under the radar. It didn’t work very well. The siblings’ grades tanked, the stress at home made them do even worse in school, and the vicious cycle throughout most of eighth grade. Before the incident, the siblings had always been good friends, but after, they became inseparable, confiding in each other and sharing the burden of being secretly deviant together. Of course, their charade couldn’t last forever. As their wings began to grow too large to conceal, they got more and more anxious. Owen was always the closest with the triplet’s parents, and after one particularly difficult day, tired of lying about her entire life, she told their parents. Val and Flare had never seen their parents so angry before. Their father locked the triplets in their room and argued with their mother in the hallway, just out of earshot. Owen, Flare, and Val huddled together on the floor, silent and miserable. They could hear their parents speaking in distraught but hushed tones, but they couldn’t make out what they were saying. Their father unlocked the door and looked at them with cold eyes. Their mother was sobbing quietly, but he looked calm, righteous fury and determination simmering just beneath his stoic demeanor. Their father motioned for the triplets to follow him. No one said a word— the triplets were afraid to speak and bring more punishment down on themselves, and their parents offered no explanation as they open the door to the cellar. Flare’s memory of the rest of that night is unfocused and fragmented. They remember this: their hands were tied as the smell of gasoline spread through the room, their father’s fire-lit face mouthing the words “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”, zip ties, feverish pain and confusion. Their mother crying in the corner, averting her eyes, refusing to help her husband but not making any moves to stop him either. They remember Owen being taken first. They remember her screaming telepathically in their head. The room becoming to bright to look at. Then just static and Val repeating the words “We have to get out We have to get out.” Their father’s hands grabbing each of the two remaining triplets by their throats. “We have to get out” Then as the fire started, they remember falling through the floor and landing on the dark, dew covered ground by their old swing set. They ran and the world became cold and pain and adrenaline. Somehow, between superpowers and luck, Val and Flare made it through the night alive. They remember hiding as their father searched the cul-de-sac, catching glimpses of their own partially charred skin when they darted through the light of the street lamps. As they ran, Flare began to glow, they passed their hands over the burn marks and the skin healed itself, they did the same to Val and the skin did the same, knitting itself back together, the charred black crust falling away onto the sidewalk. Still too weak to fly, they remember limping along the side of the road, holding hands with Val, diving into the bushes every time a car drove by. They remember sleeping in a bus terminal, anonymous amongst a half dozen other homeless kids with tattered clothes and tired eyes. They remember the feeling of being shell-shocked into blankness, of sitting on the cold dirty concrete and staring at their hands thinking nothing at all. Eventually, somehow, they ended up in New York City, the only place where two homeless kids with superpowers could go largely unnoticed. It wasn’t as far from home as they’d like— they grew up in rural upstate New York— but it was far enough. In the first few months they very nearly starved to death, but slowly they worked out a system for stealing what they needed to get by. At first, Flare would distract store employees while Val invisibly stole food and supplies. Flare and Val largely avoided the dangers of being homeless teens by nesting in the inaccessible upper floors of abandoned buildings. Wings, although cumbersome for everyday life, are extremely useful for finding safe places to hide away in at night. They made a bed of stolen blankets and clothes and other soft things, and stole books and games and things to entertain themselves. Both of them felt Owen’s absence like a festering wound, Flare wanted to talk about it, but Val deflected any attempts to talk at all that night. About a year into their homeless escapade, the twins decided that they should start earning money. They didn’t want to arouse suspicion by having a presence in the world so they decided to stick with what they did best as kids— Video Games. Being twitch streamers was an easy way to earn money, and the twins earned a degree of notoriety on the internet as the Terrible Trouble Twins. When they were around 17 they found the academy. Hesitant at first, the twins started visiting the NYC NASP office mostly using the office computer to look at memes. On one such visit a member of the Metrograde Protectors approached the twins about joining the Hero Academy. They were cautious of affiliating themselves with an organization, but Slipstream's personality helped them get over that fear. Following Slipstream's advice, they started to frequent the NASP office in NYC, and eventually enrolled in the Hero Academy. After they completed their training, they were placed in Detroit, and participated in the formation of the Angels of Detroit. Then Flare got into the Great British Baking show, and went on to be the most successful baker in all the land Appearance Flare changes form at least once every day, shifting hair color, style, race, height, gender, etc. Their most natural form has white wings and looks very similar to Val. Her non-powered form is an average-looking red haired girl. Most of their life, her hair has been died blond, but after gaining the ability to morph, they let it grow out and become red again. Inventory * Hello Kitty Backpack * Faraday Cuffs (2) * Badge (location tracking, call for back-up) * Bracers - "for fighting!" (for style) * A copy of Dante's Inferno (un-opened) * Random key that they found * Emergency Sweater * Sketch pad * Flash light * A Knife! Powers and Abilities * Shape-shifting, morph attack * Teleportation, turnabout * Healing * Regeneration * Flight * Illusions * Telepathy * Talk to Ghost * Forcefield * Blast * Infravision, counter illusion